“Your loving Father,

“Pyotr Bugrov, Priest.”

Groholsky read this letter aloud, and he and Liza both looked inquiringly at Bugrov.

“You see what it is,” Ivan Petrovitch began hesitatingly.  “I should like to ask you, Liza, not to let him see you, to keep out of his sight while he is here.  I have written to him that you are ill and gone to the Caucasus for a cure.  If you meet him. . .  You see yourself. . . .  It’s awkward. . .  H’m. . . .”

“Very well,” said Liza.

“We can do that,” thought Groholsky, “since he makes sacrifices, why shouldn’t we?”

“Please do. . . .  If he sees you there will be trouble. . . .  My father is a man of strict principles.  He would curse me in seven churches.  Don’t go out of doors, Liza, that is all.  He won’t be here long.  Don’t be afraid.”

Father Pyotr did not long keep them waiting.  One fine morning Ivan Petrovitch ran in and hissed in a mysterious tone: 

“He has come!  He is asleep now, so please be careful.”

And Liza was shut up within four walls.  She did not venture to go out into the yard or on to the verandah.  She could only see the sky from behind the window curtain.  Unluckily for her, Ivan Petrovitch’s papa spent his whole time in the open air, and even slept on the verandah.  Usually Father Pyotr, a little parish priest, in a brown cassock and a top hat with a curly brim, walked slowly round the villas and gazed with curiosity at the “strange lands” through his grandfatherly spectacles.  Ivan Petrovitch with the Stanislav on a little ribbon accompanied him.  He did not wear a decoration as a rule, but before his own people he liked to show off.  In their society he always wore the Stanislav.

Liza was bored to death.  Groholsky suffered too.  He had to go for his walks alone without a companion.  He almost shed tears, but . . . had to submit to his fate.  And to make things worse, Bugrov would run across every morning and in a hissing whisper would give some quite unnecessary bulletin concerning the health of Father Pyotr.  He bored them with those bulletins.

“He slept well,” he informed them.  “Yesterday he was put out because I had no salted cucumbers. . .  He has taken to Mishutka; he keeps patting him on the head.”

At last, a fortnight later, little Father Pyotr walked for the last time round the villas and, to Groholsky’s immense relief, departed.  He had enjoyed himself, and went off very well satisfied.  Liza and Groholsky fell back into their old manner of life.  Groholsky once more blessed his fate.  But his happiness did not last for long.  A new trouble worse than Father Pyotr followed.  Ivan Petrovitch took to coming to see them every day.  Ivan Petrovitch, to be frank, though a capital fellow, was a very tedious person.  He came at dinner-time, dined with them and stayed a very long time.  That would not have mattered.  But they had to buy vodka, which Groholsky